Hello Everyone,
I was going to prepare a new market watch. I noticed a trend that I have been tracking has suddenly reversed. This has made this edition challenging and TBH I skipped it in favour of this conversation.

For months now I have been watching the total number of credits available in the game on active accounts. This number was ridiculously high and led to troop prices being over 100 for a very long time. The consistent above 100 price meant no one would purchase Troops off the market in great quantities. It is better to save those credits until they can be used to pay for planet limits as then you would get many times the benefit, depending on the situation over 10 times more value.

It stands to reason that all prices are loosely fixed to troops and this of course made the whole market unusable. I was tracking the credits because by my calculations there are more credits coming into the system each month than are leaving, let alone credit purchases.

The market has re stabilized somewhat. How and why did this happen? Is someone playing around or did everyone get all the upgrades for a few months?

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

I think someone decided to stop being so stingy and has put T and other resources up on the market for more reasonable prices. I personally have found some offers that interested me, however purchasing T on the market is still just so expensive. Those deals usually don't hold very high quantities, so you end up at a market price of 70-100 for any sizable purchase which is extortion given the few credits that can be earned monthly. I'm not very well versed in economics but from a consumer standpoint the market remains mostly unusable for any sizable transactions.

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Previous Aliases:
JR Scovill
Future SL Ruler
Reaper Of Souls
Reaper Of Souls2
ReaperOfSouls90
RosReborn

There are enough credits put into the system monthly to upgrade almost 30 accounts fully. The abundance of credits certainly affects this.
Too many credits means someone will grab a few T at 100 and then I have no reason to sell or or compete for the sale as I already have my upgrade credits. Something is certainly going on and I appreciate your feedback because prices have come down. I had not considered that it was only low volume at those prices though.

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

5 ×100,000 units 50 credits per 100,000 units
4 ×100,000 units 50 credits per 100,000 units
5 ×100,000 units 50 credits per 100,000 units
5 ×100,000 units 50 credits per 100,000 units
8 ×100,000 units 89 credits per 100,000 units
8 ×100,000 units 89 credits per 100,000 units
10 ×100,000 units 89 credits per 100,000 units
10 ×100,000 units 140 credits per 100,000 units
10 ×100,000 units 140 credits per 100,000 units
10 ×100,000 units 140 credits per 100,000 units

That's the current market for Troops right now. The "market price" of 50 credits per unit is deceiving because there are only 19 units @ that price with another 26 @ 89 credits and the final 40 units @ 140 credits on that page. That puts us as an average cost of 104 credits per unit for troops to buy up that entire page of credits. Which is only 8.5m T. I've bought credits for $ multiple times this year and collected clan and personal round wins multiple times. And every pile of credits I amass disappears so fast even with the best snipes on the market while leaving my total T purchased at only a couple days worth of production @ most. That's why as someone who actively purchases T from the market, I can say that the price remains extortionary. I think the main problem, as you said, is that people have massive stockpiles of credits on their account with nothing to spend it on. Max upgrades are only 1810 credits so someone with say 50k credits stockpiled wouldn't have any need to sell troops on the market for over two years. Those same people have huge stockpiles of all the other resources so they have no need to sell troops for credits to cover purchasing those. Meaning someone like me with a relatively small stockpile of resources, and very few credits has nothing of value to trade for troops, or credits to buy those precious troops. Simply put, having all the currency and goods in the hands of few leads to a dead market.

__________________________
Previous Aliases:
JR Scovill
Future SL Ruler
Reaper Of Souls
Reaper Of Souls2
ReaperOfSouls90
RosReborn

I also want to clarify that the overall problem is not people with lots of resources and credits. That is only a symptom of the problem. The real problem is that there is no Credit sink the in game. Credits are pumped into the game through voting, purchasing, and winning personal/clan scoreboards. However the only sink for them is the upgrades. Which maxes out at only 1810 a round that can be spent. Any other transaction involving credits only spreads them around the economy, but they never leave the economy. The only time when this would be a good thing, is if they were being spread to other players to buy their upgrades, but for one there aren't enough active players who need the upgrades to sink enough, and two there is no fair way to transfer that amount of credits to the people who would need them.

So I think what could really fix the market is implementing some kind of Credit sink into the game that would increase the value of the currency, and in turn encourage people to buy and sell resources. The question is, what could be implemented that would encourage people to spend their credits, while not completely destroying the game and it's competitiveness?

1. Production boost - at the cost of X amount of credits per day/week/month production of X resource gets boosted by X amount.
2. Longer inactivity - pay X amount of credits to extend the inactivity timer on production for X amount of time from the current two week limit. Meaning your planets could produce for longer than two weeks without logging in.
3. Faster transportation - I-flight times are reduced by X amount/percentage of minutes for X amount of duration at the cost of X amount of credits.

I'm sure there are plenty of other benefits out there that people would be interested in, given we could work out the variables to keep it from having too many adverse effects on the game. If anyone else can think of any more feel free to share them. At the end of the day I think giving people something to spend their credits on will revive the market.

__________________________
Previous Aliases:
JR Scovill
Future SL Ruler
Reaper Of Souls
Reaper Of Souls2
ReaperOfSouls90
RosReborn

here is an idea trained ships for credits i !#@!$ hate training assaults!!!

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10:35:19 | Karil has been defeated by Relic.
10:35:19 | Karil planet 0 Demonville has been captured by Relic, RedRum.
01:52:34 | Professor planet 0 BZ neg13 30 20 has been captured by Relic, RedRum.

If that doesn't make it onto the chopping block, I train ships for 1.6m T

__________________________
Previous Aliases:
JR Scovill
Future SL Ruler
Reaper Of Souls
Reaper Of Souls2
ReaperOfSouls90
RosReborn

ill keep that in mind

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10:35:19 | Karil has been defeated by Relic.
10:35:19 | Karil planet 0 Demonville has been captured by Relic, RedRum.
01:52:34 | Professor planet 0 BZ neg13 30 20 has been captured by Relic, RedRum.

You are right ROS.
Finding a mechanic to do it without breaking the game is also important. We could do it by reducing credit round awards but are hesitant to do that.

__________________________
I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

I think reducing round rewards would only limit future collection of credits. It doesn't solve the issue of the game being saturated with credits. For instance:

Person A has 100,000 credits and 200,000,000 of each resource floating around.
Person B has 1,000 credits and no stockpile.

Person B wants to buy Troops from person A but his credits don't really have any value for person A with his current balance of 100,000 credits. Person B cannot produce and sell non-defensive resources as person A also has stockpiles of that. So person B takes first place at a reduced rate (say 2500 credits/mo) for 12 months straight. Now person B has ~9000 credits after a year of 1st place and upgrades, and person A has ~78,000 credits after a year of inactivity, only logging on to keep production going and purchasing upgrades. Person B still has nothing of value to trade with person A because A still has nothing to spend his credits on.

What would be the benefits of reducing credit rewards? I really can't think of any that would become evident any time soon. Someone with a credit balance of 50,000 can play for 27 rounds getting max upgrades each round without ever needing to compete for credits. The people who are actually competing for those credits would be at even more of a disadvantage to those people and with less people being able to afford their upgrades that gives people with large credit balances the economic advantage, as well as the competitive advantage.

Going along with the credit sink idea.. I think the types of upgrades you'd be able to purchase/rent would have to be purely "quality of life" or "convenience" upgrades so as not to break the game. Similar to the "Own Nearby Detection" upgrade we currently have in technologies. There is no competitive difference in that technology, a convenience feature for empire management. Reducing i-flight times really doesn't break the game either as, in this activity level, i-flight times are not much of a factor in the competitive aspect. Other upgrades such as increased production rates could definitely have a large effect in the game as people who could afford the service would out-compete those would couldn't quite easily. Maybe first we need to take inventory on what people's biggest complaints are in terms of the game itself, and from there we could figure out small upgrades/services which could nullify those issues while not giving an unfair advantage.

__________________________
Previous Aliases:
JR Scovill
Future SL Ruler
Reaper Of Souls
Reaper Of Souls2
ReaperOfSouls90
RosReborn